"Is that why you are prepared to bend before them? Because they cleaned out your tusk?"
The rumble fell silent for a long time. Then Snagtooth said, "Silverhair, I think I understand them. I think I am like them."
"Like the Lost?"
"Look around you. There are no bitches here. No cubs. These Lost are alone. Like a bachelor herd, cut off from the Families. No wonder they are so cruel and unhappy… Silverhair, I envy you. I can smell it from here, even above the blood and the rot of your wounds and the burning of Eggtusk’s flesh—"
"Smell what?"
"The calf growing inside you."
Silverhair, startled, listened to the slow oceanic pulsing of her own blood. Could it be true?
Snagtooth murmured, "For me it’s different, Silverhair. Year after year my body has absorbed the eggs of my unborn calves, even before they fully form."
Now, in the midst of her own confusing pulse of joy, Silverhair understood. She should have known: for the Cycle teaches that sterile Cows, unable to produce calves, will sometimes grow as huge as mature Bulls, as if their bodies are seeking to make up in stature what they lack in fertility.
Snagtooth said, "Now do you understand why I submit to the Lost? Because there is nothing else for me, Silverhair. Nothing."
And Snagtooth turned her head, and Silverhair saw her clearly for the first time since they had arrived at this nest. "Oh, Snagtooth…"
Snagtooth’s trunk was gone — her trunk with its hundred thousand muscles, infinitely supple, immensely strong, the trunk that fed her and assuaged her thirst, the trunk that defined her identity as mammoth. Now, in the center of her face, there was only a bloody stump, grotesquely shadowed by the fire’s flickering light.
Snagtooth had allowed the Lost to sever her trunk at its root. She couldn’t even feed herself or obtain water; she had made herself completely reliant on the mercy of the Lost, for whatever remained of her life.
The pain must have been blinding.
"It isn’t so bad!" Snagtooth wailed thickly. "Not so bad…"
The eternal Arctic day wore on.
Silverhair’s stomach was so empty now, her dung so thin, she seemed to have passed beyond the pain of hunger and thirst. She couldn’t even pass urine anymore. The rope burns on her legs seemed to be rotting, so foul was the stench that came from them. She was giddy from lack of sleep, so much so that sometimes the pain fell away from her and she seemed to be floating, looking down on the fouled, bloody body trapped between the stakes on the ground, flying like a gull halfway to the Sky Steppe.
She tried to sense the new life budding inside her — did it have limbs yet? did it have a trunk? — but she could sense only its glowing, heavy warmth.
At last, one dark and cloudy midnight, the situation came to a head.
Skin-of-Ice approached her. She saw that he staggered slightly. His hairless head was slick and shining with sweat. In his paw he held a glittering flask, already half-empty. He raised it in his paw, almost as a mammoth would raise a trunkful of water. But he drank clumsily, as a mammoth never would, and the fluid spilled over his chin and neck.
She had no idea what the clear fluid was. It certainly wasn’t water, for its smell was thin and sharp, like mold. Surely it would only serve to rot him from within. But perhaps that explained why, when the Lost forced this liquid down their throats, they would dance, shout, fight, fall into an uncomfortable sleep far from their nests near the fires or in the artificial caves. Sometimes — she could tell from the stink — they even fouled themselves.
And it was when the clear liquid was inside him that Skin-of-Ice would cause Silverhair the most pain.
He wiped away the mess on his face with his paw. He stalked before her, eyeing her, calculating. Then he turned and barked at the other Lost. Two of them emerged from one of their improvised caves, reluctant, staggering a little. They yapped at Skin-of-Ice, as if protesting. But Skin-of-Ice began to yell at them once more, pointing to the bindings on Silverhair’s legs, and then pointing behind him.
Silverhair stood stolidly in her trap. It was obvious she was to face some new horror. Whatever it was, she swore to herself, though she could not mask her weakness, she would show no fear.
The Lost, reluctantly obeying Skin-of-Ice, clustered around the stakes that trapped Silverhair’s legs and loosened the ropes. Her wounds, with their encrusted blood and scab tissue and half-healed flesh, were ripped open.
Released, her right foreleg crumpled and she dropped to one knee. The blood that flowed in her knees and hips, joints that had been held stiff and unmoving for so long, felt like fire.
But for the first time since being brought to this place, Silverhair’s legs were free. She stood straight with a great effort.
Now the Lost started to prod at her, and to pull at her ropes. She tried to resist, but she was so weakened, the feeble muscles of these Lost were sufficient to make her walk.
She moved one leg forward, then another. The pain in her hips and shoulders had a stabbing intensity.
But the pain began to ease.
Silverhair had always been blessed by good health, and her constitution was tough — designed, after all, to survive without shelter the rigors of an Arctic winter. Even now she could feel the first inklings of a recovery that might come quickly — if she were ever given the chance.
But still, it hurt.
Her strength was returning. But she did not let her limp become less pronounced. Nor did she raise her head, or fight against the ropes. It occurred to her it might be useful if the Lost did not know how strong she was.
As they passed a fire, Skin-of-Ice pulled out burning branches. He kept one himself and passed the others to his companions. Soon the patch of littered beach was illuminated by overlapping, shifting circles of blood-red light, vivid in the subdued midnight glow.
They led her past Snagtooth. Her aunt was still tied loosely by the rope dangling from her neck. The stump of her severed trunk was ugly, but it seemed to be healing over.
Snagtooth turned away.
Silverhair walked on, flanked by the Lost, led by the capering gait of Skin-of-Ice in the flickering light of the torches.
They were dragging her to another shelter: a dome shape a little bigger than the rest. The shelter stank of mammoth. She felt her dry trunk curl.
The other Lost backed away, leaving her with Skin-of-Ice. Almost trustingly, he reached up and grabbed one of the ropes that led to the tight noose around her neck. Feigning weakness, she allowed herself to be led forward toward the shelter.
Skin-of-Ice shielded his torch and led her through the shelter’s entrance. It was so narrow, her flanks brushed its sides.
She felt something soft. It felt like hair: like a mammoth’s winter coat.
Inside the shelter was utter darkness, relieved only slightly by a disk of indigo sky that showed through a rent in the roof. The stench of death was almost overpowering.
She wondered dully what the Lost was planning. Perhaps this was the place where Skin-of-Ice would, at last, kill her.
He bent and flicked his torch over a small pile in the middle of the floor. It looked like twigs and branches. A fire started. At first smoke billowed up, and there was a stink of fat. But then the smoke cleared, and the fire burned with a clear, steady light.
She saw that the fire was built from bone shards, smashed and broken. Mammoth bones.
The fire’s light grew.
The walls of this shelter were made of some kind of skin, and their supports were curved, and gleamed, white as snow.
The supports were mammoth tusks.